Meaning of “Life seems neither long nor short, and we…”

Muir describes freedom as absorption in immediate natural experience, where ordinary anxiety about saving time temporarily loses its force.

Nature is presented as a source of knowledge that can complement formal study by training attention and receptiveness.

Change is treated as the condition of the world, while our experience of life is shaped by judgment.

Wordsworth describes long attention to nature as a dependable source of memory, quietness, and moral perspective.

An obsession with extending life can undermine the peace of the life already present, because fear of ending displaces attention from living.

Attention is directed to ordinary flowers as a corrective to anxious preoccupation, making observation itself part of the teaching about worry.